Epic's Mark Rein about UT3, Users Mods and DVD Space on Xbox 360 Posted by XanTium | August 15 16:05 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From Mark Rein on forums.epicgames.com: [QUOTE] I continue to be disappointed that folks on the internet treat any positive thing we say about one platform as some sort of critique of another platform. We're a multi-platform company folks please come to grips with that. We like the PC. We like the 360. We like the PS3. We like the Macintosh. We like Linux. We will deliver UT3 for all of these platforms and it will rock on every one. The simple facts state that the optical disc on the PS3 holds more data than the optical disc on the 360. If we exceed size of the 360s optical disc then we'll have to find alternative ways to get the content to 360 users such as making it downloadable. Adding a second DVD to a game like UT3 would be a challenge because when playing online you might not know exactly what map you're going to be playing next and we have to be able to accommodate users of the core system. So does that mean the disc on the 360 might have a map or two less? Possibly although it is too early to tell for sure. People love Unreal Tournament because we always ship it with tons of great content but that also makes it a bit of a disc hog - in a good way Obviously, and as is true with most major games on 360 and PS3, you're going to be putting your hard drive to good use if you want to experience the full richness of content that UT3 will have to offer over the lifetime of the game. the fact that you can do this is a good thing. I don't know the exact numbers but I suspect the version of Gears of War that most of our customers play today on their 360s, when you combine the downloadable content with the content on the disc, is larger than what we could fit on the 360's optical disc alone. So clearly there are perfectly good strategies to cope with this situation. We're all very used to downloading extra content for console games and with UT3 there will be lots of it for all supported platforms. In fact the cool thing about our engine is that when you make content for one platform it can run on all of them. If history is any indication, the vast majority of UT3 content won't even come from Epic - it will come from some very brilliant end users with lots of cool and innovative ideas. When it comes to user created mods on the 360 - we will work with Microsoft to find a way to support them. We just don't have all the answers today and it isn't our chief priority at this very moment because we already have our hands completely full shipping UT3 on PC and PS3 as well as shipping Gears of War on PC. When we get those out of the way, and get a little time to spend with our friends and families, then we'll get back on this issue and figure it out. [/QUOTE]

Yep, add any extra content free that equals or surpasses the PS3 and i'll be happy!

Disc space considerations when developing console games does not bode well for John Carmack's megatexturing.

Think i prefer quality over quantity myself, given that the x360 version is almost guaranteed to look and play ( thanks to live ) better.

I honestly have no idea how you came to this conclusion?

- PS3 allows keyboard and mouse
- PS3 online has more potential with "out of the gate" mod support, along with the ability to support custom servers, and go Cross platform. it's missing out on xbox live friends list and invite system but that's about it.
- Rein, even as an annoying PR guy, has suggested that the UT3 engine is running very well on PS3.

Anyone notice that Epic does this when they are hyping an exclusive? Remember when they said Gears cant run on PS3 do to memory? Seems like Rein likes bating the fanboys.

You can get keyboard and mice to work on the 360 with the right hardware.
Cross platform? With what, the 360 or a Windows pc? So technically the PS3 wouldnt be able to do cross platform if other platforms couldnt either. Besides with the ammount of people on Xbox LIVE i doubt your going to run out of enough players to play for the need to go cross platform. Besides, cross platform is a cool concept and its cool that its possible so its not all about having to have the right console but going cross platform doesnt make gameplay any better, and presumably not worse.

I don't mind downloading it, as long as it's free or the PS3 users are charged extra for the game to make up for what we'll have to pay on LIVE. Who thinks that'll happen?

Yes, and as long as you care they not only hype, they deliver too.
Honestly I'm out of that race but my Premium X360 has a 20Gb HDD total, and I feel uneasy with hogging my console with maps.

well with the oblivion and PSU expansions along with UT3 maps, that might actually give me a decent reason to get the 120GB HDD.

why are ppl so negative? when i read that statement all i got from it was user created might be possible on the 360.



Its also missing achievements and xbox live's overall sense of community thats makes a game that much better.

I would much rather fill my HDD with game related content rather than digital media. I see it as a gameing system first, and a digital media hub second. Most of the free stuff available for download is a bunch of advertising crap anyways. If I'm gonna buy a movie or show, I don't want it to be locked to one system. I do like the idea of new release rentals off of marketplace though.

Hello Fellow Gamers. From Mark Rein

Really ? HHHmmmm...let's do some math.


GEARS Of War 6.43 GB full game with default maps.
Map pack 1 is 99mb & Map pack 2 is 230MB.

Total size of all maps & full game is 6.76GB
A full DVD9 is 8.58GB. So the available space is 1.82GB

4 maps in Gears = 230MB
So in theory 4/x = 230MB/1.82GB x = 31.6 MAPS!!!

Now that's a lot of Maps for Gears. If they use the same engine & programming technique, then the amount of maps shouldn't be that big of a deal to fit on a DVD9.

Sorry Mark, I just had to call you out on that particular remark about the maps for Gears. They all could've fit on a standard DVD9 with room to spare. So.. please, come up with something better than that.

That is the stupidest thing i've ever heard. I mean, heaven forbid that they compress they maps on live and it gets extracted onto your HDD once its done

As you should know the maximum XBox360 DVD size is fixed.
You should be familiar with a parameter: LayerBreak=1913760
Ok, LayerBreak is the sector number where the head move from layer 0 to layer 1 and start writing backward (Opposite Track Path).
You should know also that a DVD sector is 2048 bytes so each layer holds up to 3919380480 bytes, or 7838760960 bytes total (7475,625 MB).
Well, now you've to subtract the first track size (you know, the one with the "dancing circles" in DVD Video format) twice (because that's unused on layer 1 too).
What you get back (minus something for XDVD structure, minus something for security placehold, if they still exist on XBox360) is the actual maximum DVD size.
You know, it's more like 7,05 Gb than 8,58 Gb.

See Ya!

Anyways... according to Jagosix the "Total size of all maps & full game is 6.76GB". So 7.05gb or not its still within the needed space for gow and maps

6.760 + 0.329 = 7.089 > 7.05

Anyway 7.05 was a supposed size (7.05 Gb is indeed the GB -as 1024Mb - size of every X360 ISO AFAIK, I just "pretend" that 7.05 GB -as 1000Mb- is the correct size when you cut out useless stuff).
Examining an ISO would give us the right number, but I've none and I'm not interested, I'm just fed up of people claiming that an XBox360 DVD can go up to 8+ Gb.

Im suprised no1 else picked up on this.



All of those platforms? They're making UT for mac and linux? It doesnt sound right, but they've kinda said that badly cos i doubt its gonna happen.

I wish companies like Microsoft or the developers that get bitchslapped by Microsoft for admitting that the DVD9 is a LIMITATION in the near future would just shut the hell up.

Quit tap dancing.

It is simple:

A> If bluray is letting you do something that you CANNOT do with DVD in gaming and we aren't just talking about texture quality, but actual game CONTENT, then DVD *IS* a limitation and all of Microshaft's spin in the entire world is worthless. Microsoft: Quit trying to tell us the sky is green. We can very well see that it is bluray. If Microsoft REALLY wanted to support HD DVD then they should make the players SUPER cheap to add to the 360...almost so cheap that you have to get it.

B> If the HD-DVD drives were cheaper, they could renig on their earlier promise and Microshaft could release games in the HD-DVD format.


To recap: If a developer is making a game that has 80% of what they "wanted to do" on a DVD and they have to work around it and figure out how to make it downloadable or flat out missing from the 360 scene but they consider making it all available to bluray users (ps3) then DVD *IS* a limitation AND Microsoft was wrong... AGAIN.

I wouldn't buy a PS3 anyway, but I still don't like how Microsoft tried to tell everyone that "you'll never need HDDVD to play a game in this generation...DVD9 has plenty of room."...when obviously it does not have enough room to avoid horrible load times if you have to compress data to get it on there.

I think what the guy is trying to say is it will be fine on whatever platform, whether it use dvd9 or blu-ray. I don't know why everyone like to debate the same hoarse shit over and over again.

I will probably get this for my PS3 and 360, so only time will tell which is superior.

I don't know how many people are blind to this. We're fairly "new" into the whole new-gen consoles are we're already seeing games close to (or even exceeding) the capacity of xbox 360's DVD9. No matter how MS or the fan boys can spin this, this IS a limitation and we're already hitting it SO soon into the product cycle. I don't know how the architect who designed the system specs didn't have a vision to see this. I mean DVD is a 12 (yes, twelve!!) year old technology which they're fitting into a 'next gen' console.

MS screwed up on the optical format. It's 8GB (xbox dvd) vs 50GB (bluray) - and at LEAST another 3 years left till the 'next' xbox arrives. This means that the 360 is already limiting the artists on their flexibility to deliver their content as visioned - artists who don't see such a restriction on PC (hard disk installations) and PS3 (Bluray).

I guess we'd better get used to getting lesser content, since it's not going to get any better.

Hello Fellow Gamers. The raw unformatted size is 8.5Gb. But as was stated (after doing some more research) it's actually from 7.92 to 7.95. That's formated & with data.
http://www.videohelp.com/dvd
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD

SO again lets see

Total size of all current downloaded maps & full game is 6.76GB
A full DVD9 is 8.54GB (corrected unformatted) . A x360 DVD can actually hold 7.92 - 7.95 (approximately) So the available space is 1.19GB


4 maps in Gears = 230MB
So in theory 4/x = 230MB/1.19GB x = 26 MAPS!!!

That's still a lot of maps. The point I'm trying to make is the DVD isn't fully filled in. Epic could've added more maps to the disc, but didn't. Now even though the PS3 will have a bigger storage capacity when Ureal 3 comes out, but what about the new maps that aren't a part of the dics. Both consoles are on equal ground in that respect, because the newer user created content won't exist until after the game is released. Reguardless of how big your storage capacity is (PC included).

Hello fellow gamers.

You should know that every XBox360 ISO is XBox360 7.572.881.408 bytes in length, with a fixed layerbreak.
As we know from XBox we can determine where the XISO track start by looking at the MICROSOFT*XBOX*MEDIA” string, it is supposed to be present twice at sector 32 of every XISO.
You'll find that the string itself is at offset 265.945.088, so the XISO itself starts at offset 265.879.552 (that's 32 sectors before that string).
Guess what ?
Considering a fixed layerbreak at sector 1.913.760 or byte 3.919.380.480 (layerbreak x 2048) we'll see that second layer holds only 3.653.500.928 bytes (7.572.881.408 - 3.919.380.480).
Some quick math tell us that 3.653.500.928 plus the size of first track we found above (265.879.552) gives us back exactly 3.919.380.480, that's mean that the ISO ends on layer 1 at the corresponding sector where 2nd track starts on layer 0.
So we can easily find how long the XISO is, it's exactly 3.653.500.928 x 2, or 7.307.001.856 bytes or 6,80 GB.
This is the gross XISO size, things like security placeholders and XISO data structures itself eat some space, leaving something less for actual files.

So please don't fire numbers like you know everything because, infact, you do not.

You just don't get it do you?

The formatted usable space on a dual layer 360 DVD is 7.05279541015625GB, Or to round off 7.05GB.

There is NO WAY POSSIBLE for a 360 game to use more space on the DVD than this amount (7.05GB).

The position that MS chose to have the layer break on the DVD caused them to lose some space on the disc,
and combined with some of the anti-piracy features they used this is all the usable space there is on the DVD.

Here is the simple math for you (remember that this is based on the Binary system not the Decimal system.)
7572881408 (bytes) / 1024 = 7395392 (Kilobytes) / 1024 = 7222.0625 (Megabytes) / 1024 = 7.05279541015625 (Gigabytes)

And since you mention Gears Of War, why not take a look at Rainbow 6 Vegas?
If I recall correctly the PS3 version also includes 5 unreleased maps (to the 360) and also included both of the
Xbox Live downloads, oh and at no extra charge.

See this image for proof of the size

(image borrowed from Guide to Extracting Security Sectors, Game Images, and Burning Game Backups
by: a9h3x http://www.traptrakz.com/X360/tutorial/)

The 360 is limited to 7.05GB disc size for usable content. Period. End Of Story.

Ludacrisvp, as a matter of facts the 360 is limited to 6,80 GB (gross, something less after considering XISO structures and security placeholders) for usable content.

I am too tired to get into the details that much tonight. I was just going after the image size for the games, that way if he came back with well they could have modified the size of the SS or the video partition to allow for more space for the game it still will never be more than the 7.05GB, certainly not anywhere near his 7.92-7.95GB claim or the previous 8.5GB one.

They're trying to do Cross Platform to PC. Anyways... have you read the reviews for the 'keyboard and mouse' solution for 360? They're not pretty

But yes. 360 does have advantages as well

All I was trying to get across was that its too early to declare one version better than the other - personally I don't feel like waiting.

This Mark Rein guy must have something against the 360, because a smart business man would solve the problem. One thing, it not a good idea pointing out limitations, you just piss people off.

The way to solve the problem is, and all the numbers are just speculation and doesn't mater for my explanation. If the UT3 was set up with, lets say, 40 maps that you would like to ship but the "inferior" DVD9 on the 360 can only hold the game and 32 maps. You don't release the game on all format with 40 map and on the 360 with 32, then go a head and bitch about the limitation.

The best idea, from a business stand point is to release all formats with 32 maps and put the rest up for download later. BOOM, problem solved. Also, Epic could possibly make some extra with all the DLC for both the PS3 and 360.

This only took me 3 minutes to think of. So why couldn't EPIC.

Well that may seem fine to you but what about the 360 users that don't have a hard drive?
And why force people to download files that you could have included on the disc that the game was shipped with?
Doing what you suggest would also waste bandwidth from the servers, then you will complain about lag because people are downloading the maps from the server.

Just deal with the fact that the DVD9 format is a LIMITATION.
Everyone thought that PS2 was dumb to use DVD5 and DVD9 when it was launched because 650MB or 700MB is more than enough space for a game.
In the long run it paid off more than you know by using the DVD9 format last gen, and for Sony the BluRay format will once again pay off for them.

I don't beleive this bullshit that they are running low on drive space.
They're not trying hard enough (i am NOT claiming that I could do better) but,
take a gander at what theprodukkt did with debris in only 170kb
http://212.202.219.162/debris/
These are the same guys that did the .kkrieger first person shooter in 96kb

Exactly, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, DVD etc. are only the mediums...Compression baby!

I love this argument because its always the same "look what they did with this game!". Chances are, you havent attempted to play the demo. The loading screen for the demo alone is approximately 30 minutes long, Now imagine that on an optical format.

Ive always said "compression comes with loss" and I stand by that statement, even with MS' top of the line tools, youll have to suffer excrutiating load time, not to mention that the 360 isnt equiped with the current standard gig of ram most pc's come with today, let alone the luxury of having the availability of having the HDD there at all times.
There are some instances where Compression would be a good descion, say for instance, a gig or two could easily be compressed without too much loss or loading times, but when were looking at 20 gig games (just an example) its going to cause a problem.

Of course it really doesnt matter, Ms has no problem using more than one disc, but im interested in what their games are going to be like in about a year.

Apparently you really don't understand this argument.

this really is not compression we're talking about here, it's called procedural texturing. The textures are generated using mathematical formula in RAM. so the CPU and the MEMORY are the bottleneck for load times, it's generally going to actually improve loading times because you don't have to deal with loading textures from a optical drive to the memory, the CPU generates the textures into the memory.

Then you mention that "the 360 isnt equipped with current standard gig"

It won't matter if you're loading the textures from a fucking blueray disk, or from procedurally generated textures, the ones from the disk will still take up the same amount of video memory when they're loaded.

Now what?

I don't think you can "procedural texture" an artist made texture, not without some heavry loss.
And, if either it's possible, it won't solve anything, they are talking about MAPS, maps are mainly geometry often with recycled textures (<- so they didn't taek any more space).
And you canno "procedural texture" maps.

I agree it may not be the ideal solution this generation. Many other techniques can be used and it's amazing what developers and programmers can do when pushed to the limits. The 360 will generate ten of millions of dollars for publishers so if they need to spend time and resources on a dedicated team to create better compression techniques they will. If they are having problems with the speed of the PS3 Blu-Ray drive, cell architecture or split memory then they will dedicate time and money to that. That is the way the industry works. We have yet to see the 360 holding back the creative genius of the developers and don't expect it ever will. DVD has proven itself a strong medium and the advantages of Blu-Ray don't balance the other problems the PS3 is currently having. Having a larger install base is going to bring more bigger and better games than having a larger disc medium. And the DVD is more than capable of delivering first class gaming entertainment in high definition (i.e. Bioshock) this generation.

yes, you can, and yes you can.

i'm having a good chuckle at this:
you said
"maps are mainly geometry" (math)
and "you canno [generate using math] a map."
WTF dude, did you even read before you posted?

.kkrieger takes less than a minute (yes, I used a stopwatch) to load on my system. The time measured is from double-clicking the .exe in WinRAR to the moment I can start to play. Thus this minute includes stuff like decompressing the .exe from the .zip file (WinRAR), loading the file to memory and start executing it (Windows), etc. My system specs: Athlon XP2700+ (2.16Ghz), 1GB DDR-RAM (Dual Channel), 7200rpm HDD. The GPU is irrelevant because AFAIK it isn't used for the procedural synthesis process (generating meshes & textures during loading). The reason for this is simple: because of differences in the GPUs of different developers (nVidia, ATI/AMD) the same code executed by different GPUs might result in a slightly different outcome.
What's so important about this? The loading time of a .kkrieger port to the Xbox360 could be greatly decreased because a) compared to my system the 360 is clocked 1GHz higher and has two additional CPU cores and b) the GPU can be used for generating some of the textures/meshes. All Xbox360 GPUs are equal and thus the outcome is always the same.
And btw: when using procedural synthesis your DVD drive will mostly be idle as it it isn't used most of the time. Even while loading it's only used for the fraction of a second. Thus reading the input data which is used for procedural synthesis from an optical disc format has nearly no effect on loading times. The only thing that's different to loading it from HDD is that the time between the request of input data and the first bytes being sent by the drive is a shorter for HDDs than it is for any optical disc drive. We're talking about time differences of less than a second (usually around 100-200ms depending on HDD and ODD being used for comparison).

BTW: have you ever played RoboBlitz? It uses procedurally generated textures.


Depending on the formats used by the game higher compression rations are realistic. E.g. the files used by the Unreal Engine 2 (Unreal 2, UT2003/4, Unreal Championship, UC2 (uses a modified Unreal Engine 2)) can easily be compressed to less than 50% of their actual size (aside from the music which is already compressed using Ogg Vorbis. This is similar to MP3 compression). Especially the map files compress insanely well.
You also have to consider that the Xbox360 has a lot of processing power (three CPU cores at 3+ GHz each & a programmable GPU) so I don't expect loading times would increase that much (if at all) by using compression algorithms similar to what ZIP files use (and remember: those are LOSSLESS algorithms. The exact same data is reprocuded by decompression!).
I agree with you that the "missing" HDD might be a problem though. Maybe already today, maybe in the future.

And before someone "smart" thinks about mentioning that using compression AND procedural synthesis at the same time will increase loading times greatly: not it won't. The data that has to be decompressed so that the procedural synthesis algorithmus can use it as input is VERY SMALL. Look at .kkrieger: it's only 96kb in size. Decompressing such a small file can be done in milliseconds. When using both compression and procedural synthesis at the same time the system will spend 95-99% of the time in the later process (procedural synthesis). So you won't really notice the small decompression step before that.


You can "procedurally texture" maps. The whole process of procedurally generating content is called procedural synthesis. E.g. .kkrieger uses procedural synthesis for textures AND geometry.
And no, you don't take pre-made textures and apply some form of "compression" on it and when "decompressing" it use something called "procedural synthesis". Think of it (procedural synthesis) as a program you use instead of Photoshop, Maya, whatever. In this program you create your content like you're used to but the program itself doesn't store the final result (texture, geometry data, etc) directly but the steps you used to create the final result! Storing the steps takes far less space than storing the final result. When loading the files stored in this way the game "only" has to perform each step again while loading to reach the final result which it then keeps in memory and uses during gameplay. This "following the steps to create a <textures/mesh/whatever>" is called procedural synthesis.
Of course there are some other limitations aside from not using Photoshop/etc (e.g. you can't just take picture of a tree leaf and use it as a texture ingame because the only thing you then have is the final texture but not the steps nature followed to create that leaf ;)) but the general idea is as I explained: instead of storing the final textures etc only the steps used to create are stored (and followed each time during loading). And this can be applied to more than just textures but also other forms of content. Of course there's no "loss" (from compression; like when you use JPEG for images) either.

Asspants, geometry cannot be procedurally generated, you can find efficient way to store a map (and compress it too) but that's all about it.
ProfDrMorph, so we're here... you cannot use captioned images or artist made images (hand designed images).
Or, in the best case, you can (provided that the procedure is "smaller" than the resulting image, and that's not always true), but you cannot "load" them runtime because "calculating" the final image from the procedural requires too much work.

Actually you can procedurally generate geometry. Aside from the already mentioned .kkrieger Bethesda's Oblivion uses procedurally generated geometry. They licensed a software library called "SpeedTree" (specifically SpeedTreeRT). Here is the official website of that library: http://www.speedtree.com/html/speedtreert.htm. In the description of SpeedTreeRT right on top of that website it says that it 'converts the procedural definition into 3D geometry'.

Also you misunderstood what I said about "artist made images": what I said was you can't just take any image you have as an bitmap (like a picture you took with a digital camera or some final/rendered image an artist made) and convert it into a format using procedural synthesis (or procedural generation as some call it). From the ground up (and that's what artists do! They build things from the ground up.) you have to use programs designed for taking advantage of procedural synthesis. And even if something is too complex to be build from the ground up by an artist still a lot of disc space can be "saved" by using a hybrid solution (procedural synthesis for some content, traditional ways of storing for other content).
Depending on the complexity of the algorithms and generated content procedural synthesis may take some time to calculate but as you can see from software using it already it's possible to create content using procedural synthesis in a reasonable amount of time.

People still bashing procedural synthesis not knowing how it does work and what it can do should check out what some people did in just 64kb (yes sixty-four kilobytes):
http://www.theprodukkt.com/demoscene
http://www.farb-rausch.com/productions.php

Also Wikipedia has a nice article about the technology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation
Especially the section "Software using procedural generation" might be interesting for gamers.

Oh snap, it looks like someone who knows what the fuck they're talking about backed me up. Thanks, guy I don't even know!

The game doesn't use it so get over it.
The space is limited by the MS specs so get over it.
The developers made the game how they wanted it made so get over it.

Have any of you guys played that game that you speak of?
I played it and it is VERY buggy I got stuck all over the map and had to teleport constantly just to move.
Oh and the graphics that are obtained using this method are not next gen at all.

All this procedurally generated crap is OFF TOPIC anyways.

This is about how the Maps will be limited on the 360 because of the size of the disc, and the use of user mods on the console.
They may have the extra maps be downloadable but that is up to Epic, Midway, and MS.
They will most likely not change any compression settings this late in the game.

No, it's about how the maps will be limited on the 360 because the programmers are trying to shove a round peg into a square hole.

You mention bugs, and directly from the website:
download .kkrieger: chapter 1 beta here (96k)
but remember this is a beta version, and there are a lot of known bugs.

Did you think that was a finished version? They did it to prove that it could be done.

And the next-gen-pretty-pictures it produces is only limited by the artists imagination and the hardware it's running on, and even *gasp* size limits (theirs was 96k) NOT the storage medium in question DVD

Procedural synthesis can do the EXACT same stuff you can pull off your leet as shirt blueray drive at least for a good while. I won't say forever because then I would be like the guys who said we would never need more than 640k of memory.


Anyway, I think either you must be trolling, or you're just incredibly stupid.

I can't seem to figure out how to teleport in .kkrieger
I tried pressing all of the buttons, and checked the documentation.
I even did a google search to see if someone else had mentioned it before, but they had not. Maybe I'm using the wrong search terms.
Or, you found the secret undocumented trick!
Or, were you running a debugger in the background and happened to isolate the specific address in memory that is the hero's location and then changed it in real time? You must be some kind of virtual motherfucking pimp.

Or do you know these guys and they hooked you up with a special version of the game they use for testing?

Whats the trick to "teleporting constantly just to move"? Post it in your reply or I'm gonna call shenanigans on you and your whole stupid post.

Next, you'll tell us that the earth is flat, and the sun revolves around us.

Sorry but that analogy sucks.
This is not an Epic forum asking people how they should make the game that they are producing.
They decided not to use Procedural Synthesis when they created the game, it was their choice.
If you want to make a game with it go ahead, how many years will it take for a team to create something with the procedural synthesis that will even come close in comparison to the beauty of UT3, GoW, or any of the other games that are using the Unreal engine? Or other games like Heavenly Sword or R:FOM, Gran Turismo 1 had better gameplay and graphics than the procedural synthesis game can create.
Oh and wasn't the development started on the PS3 first for this game as a PS3 exclusive?
Just be happy they are making the game for your 360.


No, I can read. When it says BETA on it I expect it to have issues.


Well the hardware it is running on is a AMD Athlon X2 64 5600+ 2.8Ghz with 4GB DDR2-675 and a GeForce 7600GTOC on Vista 64 Ultimate, this machine is about as next-gen as you can get without spending a fortune. It is a 5.7 of 5.9 on the Vista experience index so I know that what they made can't get any better than it was. The graphics were pre-Unreal Tournament 1.

Oh and about that 96k game, you want to know what the real shame is? When it is running it uses MASSIVE amounts of RAM! 309,000k + or 301.75MB while showing the "intro video" and after sitting at only the menu it was steady at 320,998k or 313.47MB. Now thats what I call efficient.


I'm sure that you are one that thought it was absurd that the PS1 went to CD-ROM format back in 1994 (if you can remember back that far, besides at that point you were most likely a N64 fan) and you had the same fight when PS2 went to DVD-ROM, and you had the CD based Dreamcast, now that the PS3 is on Blu-ray and you are on the 360 fanboy bandwagon, so you are upset once again.

Oh and learn HOW TO SPELL! It is not Blueray. It is Blu-ray.


Um okay. That really hurt me.
Oh and how am I trolling?
As you can see I do own a 360 as well.
What evidence do you have that I am "incredibly stupid"?
All I see is some rambling from a pissed of fanboy that just can't handle that there are limitations to the 360 optical storage format. 6.80GB is all there is room for. Maybe M$ shouldn't have wasted so much space with that stupid layer break setup they chose to use.
Oh and before you decide to me about the 6.80GB amount please take time to search on the site, that is the accurate amount. Image size is 7.05GB then the other security features waste the other .25GB.




So what documentation were you reading?
Do NOT pass Go. Do NOT collect $200.


You really are as dumb as your gamer tag suggests, aren't you?

This thread is meant as means to comment on news. And if people feel like commenting on how solve one problem mentioned in the news it's NOT off-topic. Whether Epic reads our comments or not is totally irrelevant as it's not the intention of this thread. This thread is purely meant as means to express ones opinion.


Gran Turismo 1 has better trees than Oblivion (procedurally generated using SpeedTreeRT) and better textures in general than RoboBlitz (procedurally generated using ProFX)? No, I don't want an answer to this question.


This is proof that you don't understand what procedural synthesis is about and thus commenting on stuff you don't know about (or don't understand). Because procedural synthesis is NOT about reducing memory usage while the game is running at all!

Gotcha!



Yup missed that, I take it back I do feel stupid.




It was released early 2004.
adding to what ProfDrMorph said, do you have any clue what it is that's in that memory? It's the textures. The memory usage will be the same with a blu-ray disc full of textures. We're not talking about saving RAM memory. This is not a programming revolution, but it is an evolution, what I'm trying to get at is that
They are blaming the hardware as an easy scapegoat for their slack programming ethic.

you also said "I know what they made can't get any better"
yeah, you're right they hit an absolute ceiling , they hit it 4 years ago, when they released this game, it could never get any better.
what the hell are you basing this claim on?

have you ever used photoshop? maybe applied some filters to an image? well procedural synthesis kinda works like that. instead of designing for the sake of the argument a green leaf texture using photoshop, then saving the image as a .png or whatever and storing that texture. the only thing that gets saved in procedural synthesis is the procedure commands (define the size of the canvas/green paint fill/ apply a couple brush strokes/and then a mosaic filter) that was used to create the texture, it can be expanded to any resolution. and produce the EXACT same output. these commands to create the textures are executed at runtime then stored in memory as the textures to use.

I would hate to ruin your argument, but as a poster on the maxconsole forums points out, UT3 will actually fit on a SINGLE layer dvd.
http://forums.maxconsole.net/showthread.ph...6478#post816478

Epic is full of shit. I remember this exact same rant happened with Gears and it came out just fine.